


Apothic Wine

by texadian



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, F/M, Freeform, Humor, Sherlock Being Sherlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-13
Updated: 2015-04-13
Packaged: 2018-03-22 16:49:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3736366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/texadian/pseuds/texadian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The dark bottle sits on the countertop mocking Molly; still sealed in red, but frayed at the top, like a fruitless endeavour. Seconds pass –Molly thoroughly convinced for many of them that she should enjoy the wine on her own."</p>
<p>The whole night is a mess for Sherlock and Molly -in more ways than one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Apothic Wine

**Author's Note:**

> I apologize for any glaring mistakes. This piece is a midnight inspired, un-beta'd piece.

The dark bottle sits on the countertop mocking Molly; still sealed in red, but frayed at the top, like a fruitless endeavour. Seconds pass –Molly thoroughly convinced for many of them that she should enjoy the wine on her own. But it has been 4 weeks since they’d bought the wine together for John’s birthday and she isn’t caving now.

She hears a door close nearby and wonders if it’s him, moping about, or a neighbour home from their workday. His coat and shoes are gone from one of their various resting places and his laptop is shut: it’s the neighbour.

Her hand reaches towards her back pocket, but stops short, suspending itself over the double stitch lining. She could call John or Mary or Greg or god forbid Anderson, but she doesn’t see the point in it anymore. The point is that he is there, wherever there is, and not here with her on their anniversary (if she can even assign anniversaries to this relationship they have).

 

One moment, he is sitting in that bloody chair of his, absentmindedly flipping through a since-forgotten four-year-old case. The next he is by her side, one hand parting the hair running down her back while the other envelops her own –his thumb dancing around her palm like a parent soothing their young. His lips meet her neck and for an instant she recalls their first tryst in the lab; a spur-of-the-moment confession mixed with the exhaustion of a half-completed night shift.

She turns into him, his lips leaving her neck, and she whispers, “I am forever yours, Sherlock.”

“As am I.”

She can feel his smile against her skin, but inside, she can’t help but question how long his forever is. Is it the forever of the universe –the forever of a trillion suns burning until there’s nothing left? Or is his forever the idle standing time of a grocery line on Sunday afternoons?

He doesn’t catch her debate and turns away to return to his chair.

 

Apothic Red. It’s a fine wine, but there’s no sense in leaving the bottle out on the counter. Molly grabs it by the neck to put it back on the rack, when it slips from her damp hands and falls to the ground. In one moment, it’s full, intact, and still as enticing as the day Sherlock forked over ten pounds to buy it from the liquor store a block from John’s. But now, it’s far from fine –glass shards litter every corner between the cupboards and the wine itself has splattered out as far as the carpet. Molly goes to bend down, frazzled at her clumsy mistake, but pauses again and stands back up admiring the scene as if it’s so aesthetically pleasing, she must marvel the image for a short while.

She’s in her socks, once a plain white, now apothic red, and begins to retreat –trying her best not to step on anything sharp. Toeing out of them, she leaves the socks on the tile to retrieve the dustpan and broom from the back closet. His case file from earlier sits open on the coffee table and she leans over to finger through the photos as she passes.

It’s gruesome, but nothing her partially empty stomach can’t handle. The 4th sheet down is a brief report: five victims, all deceased, found in various rooms of a highly sought out defense attorney’s house. Two were staff, accounted for as liabilities, and the other three were the man’s wife and children, unknown if they were targeted specifically or unfortunate bystanders of a robbery gone wrong.

She doesn’t know what spurs it, but suddenly she’s crying again. Her free hand darts up to halt the tears in their tracks, but the sinking feeling is back.

 

Sherlock’s behind her again, but quite distant compared to before. She’s trying her hand at an alfredo sauce she saw online, but takes her eyes off the pot for a second to face him. His eyes are trained above hers near her forehead and she recognizes this tactic quickly.

“Five more minutes and I’ll wave my white flag, surrender, and call for take out instead.” She smiles encouragingly up at him, but it fails to break through his cold façade.

“I don’t understand anniversaries,” he states plainly. It comes out as a fact with not a trace of confusion in his voice.

Molly sets the ladle against the handle of the pot and turns off the heat.

“The history behind them or the customary proceedings that accompany them?”

He scowls as if she has answered a question he had not asked. “Not any anniversary; ours specifically.”

“Oh.” Molly moves the pot to the back of the stovetop, completely abandoning her sauce. “What about it?”

“I find it unnecessary now and think we should forgo it.”

“Now? Wait!” She pulls his arm as he begins to stalk away from her. “Why now?”

He mumbles nothing remotely coherent and yanks himself free from her grasp. Annoyed, Molly follows him to his chair and hovers over him as he sits.

“Sherlock?”

He looks up, unsure of himself, before looking away and answering, “I think it is time for me to re-evaluate this relationship.”

“Now?”

“Yes… Now.”

She huffs in disbelief –shortest forever she has ever heard of.

“When did you decide this?”

“Now.”

“You decided it was best to re-evaluate _our_ relationship literally just ten seconds ago?”

He nods like it’s the most obvious conclusion in the world.

“You decided to re-evaluate _our_ relationship without me?”

He rolls his eyes at this. “You’re being dramatic Molly. I— “

“Am I?” she cuts him off. “Am I really?”

Sherlock slouches farther into his chair and nods.

“Well if you need time to re-evaluate this relationship on your own, why don’t I leave you some space?”

Molly catches one last befuddled expression on her boyfriend’s face before the tears start flowing and her legs start carrying her out of the living room and into the bedroom at the end of the hall. They’re not loud and wailing tears, but steady enough to preoccupy her until the timer for the sauce begins to blare and the incessant repeat brings Molly to the deduction that Sherlock is no longer in the living room nor the flat in general.

 

The spill is a pain in the ass. The glass pieces are so small and jagged that they catch on the broom’s bristles and the wine dispersed around them only succeeds in accumulating in the shallow dustpan. Molly drops the set unceremoniously amidst the mess and lets out a tempered groan.

Just then, she hears a set of keys on the other end of the door and returns to the bedroom. It takes Sherlock a brief ten seconds before the door is unlocked and pushed open. Molly waits nervously for a ticked off sigh or possibly her name surrounded by words of annoyance, when instead, a low chuckle emanates from the kitchen.

She discredits her own ears and goes to the door to look outside. Sure enough though, there is Sherlock, Belstaff and all hunched, over the edge of the spill smirking to himself.

She walks out, trying to hold a scowl, but her voice breaks first. “What’s so funny?”

Sherlock turns to see Molly, still dressed in the purple skirt and yellow blouse from earlier –sans socks. Her pout is misleading and it quickly transforms into a reserved smile.

“What?” she reiterates when she makes it back to where she’d abandoned her wine-logged socks.

“You’ve made one decision easy for me, huh?”

Molly cocks her head, not following.

“I wasn’t sure whether we were going to drink the left over red from John’s birthday or left over white from Mary’s. Now it looks like we haven’t got a choice.”

“I didn’t think we’d be drinking at all tonight, actually.”

“Really?”

Molly shrugs tepidly while Sherlock takes off his coat and slings it over the back of the couch.

“How many decisions _have_ you made tonight?” Molly’s asks –her icy stare returning having not forgotten their fight from earlier.

“Only one that was important.”

Molly nods, her hope that he’d forget his stupid re-evaluation from earlier banished, and sits down in his chair, prepared for his ‘logical’ reasoning behind the dissolution of their two-year relationship.

“Well?” Molly asks –confused as to why he’s giving her this petulant-child look at the moment.

“I was sort of hoping you’d be…” he trails off. “Nevermind. Umm…” His eyes dart around the living room and land on the case file from earlier.

Molly’s grave eyes darken if possible.

“I need you to see this.” He extends the folder Molly had thumbed through earlier and she takes it in both hands.

“I don’t want to be that defense attorney Molly.”

She’s scanning the photo of the maid shot dead on the stairs, when her brain catches up with the words that have left his lips.

“I never said you were, Sherlock.”

“But I am, in a way, alone.”

Molly’s eyes scrunch and she does her best to hold in all the thoughts running through her mind, ready to be yelled out.

“He returns everyday to an empty house –not the same one… a different one of course… Right, not important. He returns home, alone, everyday, by himself. It doesn’t matter what case he has won or who has hired him. It’s always the same drive home to the same empty house.”

“Have you been tracking him Sherlock?”

“Just…. Just wait, Molly.” He looks away impatiently, but a smile etches its way onto his face and he continues. “I don’t want to be that man, Molly. Not anymore.”

Slowly it begins to dawn on the petite pathologist in front of him and she stands up, straightens her blouse, and wipes away the remnants of tears at the corners of her eyes.

“I don’t know when the next crazy is going to swing into town and I don’t know that I’ll be able to stop him. But I’d rather be dead, holding onto you, then away, wherever Mycroft has sent me last, collapsed and lifeless all alone.”  
            “You want to die with me Sherlock?”

“Preferably not soon,” he replies, grinning. “But if it comes down to it, yes.”

Molly laughs gingerly, fighting the tears in her eyes once again, but not afraid to let them start.

“Fifty five minutes ago, while sitting in that chair, I decided to re-evaluate our relationship. It finally hit me that I wanted to see you standing in my kitchen, every night, failing at my making alfredo sauce. I wanted to see your colourful jumpers underneath my Belstaff every morning on the couch before you left for Barts and the broom in a puddle of wine when I returned home.”

“Sherlock-”

“But more than anything, I wanted to just see you.”

“Everyday?”

“Most days.”

“I can agree to that.”

“Is that a yes?”

“Can you get down on one knee already? I did stand for this.”

Sherlock bends down, squeezing his long legs between the coffee table and Molly, and pulls the ring from his suit pocket.

“Will you?”

“Die with you?” Molly teases between sniffs.

“Will you marry me?”

“I’ll do both,” she says leaning into him.

Her fervour throws him off guard and he barely has enough time to slip the ring on before her mouth is on his.

“Next time you decide to re-evaluate anything,” Molly begins, holding his gaze after the kiss. “Please make it clear what your plans are before I break down, eh?”

Sherlock nods apologetically and is about to continue the kiss, when his eyes go wide and he pulls back.

“What would I exactly be re-evaluating next?”

“That case did mention children.”

“Dead children, Molly.”

“Well, we are a family that dies together, apparently,” she replies, gritting through the last few words.

“That’s open for discussion.”

“What? The kids?”

“I was sort of thinking the dying, actually.”

“Good.”

 

 

 

 


End file.
